Her Last Whisper (44 page)

Something about the look in his made hers widen. She knew who he was, knew what had happened, even before he replied with a dry, “Not quite, babe.”

“Michael?”
It might be Tony’s body, but what she was seeing in his eyes was Michael’s soul. Even as fear for him over the consequences he might suffer began to rear its ugly head, she was dizzyingly grateful to have been saved.

“Yeah.” He looked beyond her and his face changed. “Holy shit.”

His tone coupled with a funny
whooshing
sound behind her made every muscle in her body tighten with dread.

“What is it?” She tried to swivel around, tried to see what was happening behind her even as he crouched beside Bob’s body, but she saw nothing wrong. A wave of heat coupled with a crackling sound gave the lie to that. She knew what was happening instinctively, viscerally, even before the smell reached her nostrils:
fire
.

“Michael.”
Charlie’s heart sped up until it felt like it would pound its way out of her chest. Then Michael/Tony was back beside her, a set of keys in his hand as he reached above her head.

“I got you, babe,” he said as he had before, and she felt the warm strength of his hand gripping her wrists an instant before he freed her.

She dropped. Her knees refused to support her, and she folded until she was crouching on the hard concrete floor. Bob’s headless body and the pulpy mess of his head were right in front of her. Hagan, his head twisted at an unnatural angle, was just a little to the right. Her stomach convulsed as she looked at them, but there was no time.

“Get up.”
Michael/Tony was beside her, hauling her to her feet. For a second his arm wrapped around her and she leaned against him as her knees rebelled against carrying her weight, watching aghast as flames raced around the room, licking over the trail of gasoline. Then her eyes flew to her friend and Lena’s sister trapped and unconscious in the wire cage.

“Tam. Giselle,”
she cried. The fire would reach them soon.

“Get out of here.”
He pushed her away from him, and she stumbled
toward the only door. The fire was growing as it ran around the edge of the room; the door would be blocked in a matter of minutes. “Go. I’ll get them.”

With a glance that made sure she could move on her own, he ran toward the women in the cage, racing the fire toward them. The flames were growing taller, orange and red peaks that leaped toward the ceiling, and the heat and smell were intense. Charlie took one look at what was happening and stumbled after him. Her legs were wobbly, and her feet felt like they were made of pins and needles, but there was no way she was leaving them to get out—or not—on their own.

She reached Michael as he locked both hands on the gate of the dog run and literally tore it off its hinges. Flinging it aside, he spotted her.

“I told you to leave.”

He screamed it over his shoulder as he leaped inside the dog run and she followed him in. At the same time the flames found the mattresses. The roar as they went up was the scariest thing Charlie had ever heard.

“Tam, Tam, wake up!” Charlie screamed by way of an answer. Having reached her friend, she frantically shook her.

“Go. I’ll get her.” Michael scooped up Giselle and flung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He turned toward Tam. No way was he going to be able to bend down and get her, too, without losing Giselle.

“Tam!” Charlie shrieked.

“Wh—what?” Tam blinked and sat up.

“Get up! Stand up!”

Michael reached Tam’s side, and between the two of them he and Charlie managed to haul her upright. She swayed, clearly not fully conscious, but Charlie steadied her as Michael heaved her over his shoulder. He staggered a little under the weight of both of them, and Charlie was reminded that this was Tony’s body, not Michael’s, and that it was badly wounded, to boot.

Carrying both women, with Charlie still unsteady on her feet beside him, he lurched, not ran, toward the door. It was the only way out. And the fire was racing them for it.

“What’s happening?” Tam was groggy, out of it, as she tried to lift her head to look around. Still, she recognized Charlie. “Oh, thank God! I attached my voice to those terrible men. You heard it, and came. I prayed you would.”

“Stay still,” Charlie yelled at her, putting a comforting hand on her back. The fire was roaring now, consuming the mattresses, the boxes, all the junk in the dog runs, barreling toward them in a giant blazing wall. If it beat them to the door, they were dead. The air was super-heated, so hot it hurt to breathe it in, and the smell of burning was almost overwhelming.

A tiny line of flames racing ahead of the main conflagration shot in front of them just as they were within reach of the door. Charlie reached across it—the doorknob was hot—and yanked open the door.

Michael shoved her through it into the darkness outside and leaped out behind her, knocking her to the gravel and falling with her as a huge shaft of fire shot out over their heads.

A moment later the building was fully engulfed in flames. The crackling roar of it reminded Charlie of a freight train. They’d stumbled, crawled, walked, and been carried, variously, far enough away so that they weren’t being showered with sparks any longer and their skin wasn’t crisping in the heat. Tam was sitting up, blinking bemused at the enormous column of fire that was leaping toward the sky. Giselle was still unconscious, curled in the gravel. Michael was on his feet, leaning against the outer wall of one of the other buildings. Head aching, knees weak, Charlie leaned against the wall beside him, looking at him rather than the flames.

Tony’s physical body might be beside her, but it was Michael who was actually there.

“No more fucking serial killers.” He was breathless, wheezing. The look he gave her was fierce enough that it should have made her cower away from him. Instead she smiled, and pressed her hand to his warm, bristly cheek. She was so glad to be alive, but also still so frightened. For him, and for Tony, too.

Tony was grievously wounded, maybe even dead. Michael—she didn’t know what would happen to Michael now.

“You just saved all of us,” she told him, and kissed him, her lips
pressing gently against his, careful because of the extent of his physical injuries. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close to his side and bent his head and kissed her back.

Not gently at all.

Sirens filled the air, but she barely heard them.

All of a sudden his head came up, and he shoved her away from him with enough force so that she fell to her knees in the gravel.

Even as she hit the ground he screamed, the sound guttural, agonized.

“Michael?”
Her heart in her throat, she looked up just in time to watch his spirit being jerked out of Tony’s body. Tony crumpled to the ground like a suit of empty clothes. Michael, all six-foot-three powerful golden inches of him, went flying up through the air like he weighed nothing.

Then he vanished, the darkness swallowing him up like he’d never been there at all. Fear turned her blood to ice. Her pulse thundered in her ears.

“Michael!” Charlie cried, scrambling to her feet and running toward the spot where he’d disappeared. She was too late: there was nothing there.

“I love you,” she screamed after him, in case he could still hear. “I love you.”

A whole cavalcade of fire trucks and police cars and other vehicles with, she was sure, Lena and Buzz in there somewhere, came zooming up the driveway. Charlie barely noticed. She didn’t care. She stood there in the darkness for a long moment, her heart pounding, her senses reaching out, searching—

Michael was gone. Charlie could sense it, feel his absence like a tangible thing.

Had a hunter gotten him? Or was it something else?

She had no way of knowing. But her heart bled.

Tears sliding down her cheeks, she did the only thing that was left for her to do. She dropped to her knees by Tony’s limp body, and took his pulse.

He was alive. Numbly, she began to administer first aid.

Michael hurtled through darkness so absolute that it didn’t even allow for the possibility of light.

All around him was nothingness.

It was icy cold.

He could feel it filling him.

It was changing him.

No, it was bringing out more of what was already inside him.

Making him into more of what he really was.

Something born of the dark.

And violence.

All he knew was rage and pain.

Then he heard a whisper.

The tiniest thread of a whisper, twining itself around his cold, dead heart.

A woman’s voice:
I love you
.

Lost in the great Eternal Nowhere, he carried those words with him into the dark.

Two weeks later, Charlie was on her way home. Her plane had landed at Lonesome Pine Airport about half an hour before. At the moment she was in a taxi, looking out at the familiar streets of Big Stone Gap. It was late afternoon, and the town was alive with golden sunlight and the warm bright colors of autumn.

She’d spent the time sitting by Tony’s bedside in the hospital in Las Vegas. His wounds were severe, but the doctors had said he would recover fully. Earlier today, he’d been released. He was going to his parents’ house for another two weeks, when the doctors promised he’d be ready to return to work. He’d asked Charlie to come with him.

She had elected to go home instead.

In telling him of her decision, she’d told him the truth, or at least, as much of the truth as she’d felt he could handle: while there wasn’t someone currently in her life, there had been someone that she had cared for very much, and she was still getting over him.

She couldn’t properly move on—to Tony or anyone—until her heart had fully healed.

Tony had said he understood, and was prepared to wait.

Tam was fine, and had gone home to California.

Lena had fallen on Giselle like a prospector on a newly discovered gold mine, staying with her in the hospital until Giselle had recovered and then flying home with her. The sisters were back in their respective apartments now, but they were tight.

Buzz was getting the cold shoulder from both of them, but he was so happy Giselle was alive, he said he could live with that.

For a little while, at least.

So it was kind of a happy ending all around.

Except for Charlie.

So far, her ending was the opposite of happy.

It had happened exactly the way she had feared. She had fallen in love with her ghost, he had been snatched away, and now her heart was broken.

Tam had tried her best, but there was no doing anything about it. Michael was gone.

All that was left for Charlie to do was get over it.

But it was hard. Unbelievably, gut-wrenchingly hard.

That was why, when the taxi turned the corner there by the First Baptist Church, she willed herself not to even look in its direction. It was a modest, white-painted brick building with a tall steeple, a hedge of bushy green viburnum, and a graveyard off to the side.

In that graveyard was a small white cross, with M. A. Garland painted on it in crude black letters, along with the dates of his birth and death.

Michael’s grave.

Just knowing it was there tore at her heart.

She wasn’t going to look, but something, some instinct or maybe a movement caught in her periphery vision, made her risk a glance.

What she saw made her eyes widen and her lips part.

A man—a tall, well-built, tawny-haired man—stood in the graveyard looking down at Michael’s grave.

“Stop,” she practically screeched at the driver. “I’m getting out.”

When he did, parking by the curb, she all but fell out the door.

The man stood with his back to her.

He was about six three and powerfully built.

He wore jeans and boots and a black leather motorcycle jacket.

His tawny hair was cut too short.

Still—

“Michael?” Her heart pounded so hard it felt like it was trying to beat its way out of her chest. The sweet scent of the viburnum swirled around her. As she hurried toward him, she stumbled over the soft green grass.

He didn’t turn, didn’t seem to have heard. Sunlight gilded the bright strands of his hair.

She reached him, put a tentative hand on his muscular, leather-clad arm.

Her breath caught.

He was solid. He was real.
Alive
.

He turned a little as she touched him, and looked down at her.

He had a square jaw, broad cheekbones and forehead, a straight nose, and a beautifully cut mouth. He was, in fact, an absolutely gorgeous guy.

She went dizzy with excitement.

“Michael!”

He was looking down at her with an interested expression, like he had no idea who she was, like he had never seen her before in his life.

Then she noticed two things that sent her stomach plummeting right down to her toes.

He had a small scar at the side of his mouth.

And his eyes weren’t Michael’s heart-stopping sky blue.